Desktops

Windows in Schools, Open Source at Home

Anyone remember Computer Assisted Learning or CAL? No? Well it's back.

Ever since the first computer to draw a graph or do that parsing thing to allow kids to fill in missing words, ICT has been the 'Great Beige Hope' that would revolutionise teaching and learning.

It's all tosh by the way. Ignore the fake stats and the deluded evangelists. CAL (or interactive computer lead learning) is simply a gimmick perpetuated by the faux trendsetters with good hair that stalk education.

Linux desktop will trounce Windows 7

This month naked marketing muscle once again shows us how it should be done. In the UK, Microsoft made it to number one as the most respected and trusted brand, ahead even of Mercedes-Benz. The people have spoken.

Quite an achievement considering Vista bombed and no amount of PR power could persuade the non-OEM consumer otherwise. Now, obviously before it was too late and the Windows brand itself was damaged, Windows 7 has been released. Word is that it is OK, better even than XP.

Linux procurement in a recession

Without getting into too much consumer psychology it's a fact that our impulse to purchase 'desirable' products increases as our ability to buy them decreases.

This much is understood well by marketeers; as we lose something we want it more. To illustrate one aspect of this situation consider the following: as folk stopped gardening (look out of the train window if you don't believe me) the number of gardening shows on TV increased; as home cooking fell so the number of TV celebrity chefs shot through the roof; as our roads get ever more congested and restrictive Top Gear becomes more popular, you get the idea. More on TopGear later.

Linux Desktops... too much too late

My marketing director's twitteration induced me to click on a link to a ZDNet article which asserted that Linux desktops, have missed the boat; Good though they are, blah. The article was fine, but what is this obsession with the GUI?

I have clicked a lot of mice since that rainy day in 1985 when I wandered past a department store and saw a funny little one-piece computer being demonstrated by a girl (gasp had computers come to this) clicking away on what was, it turned out, a knitting pattern program (double gasp). Of course I had to have a go and clicked away on words and menus and icons.

The Future of Thin-Client Computing

An obesity crisis in the making: thin is good, slim is better, fat is best

For years I have been a fan of the ‘free, open source software/terminal server/disk-less terminal’ model of computing. I am obsessed with the  absurdly large savings on software, licences, maintenance and energy consumption that are there for the having.

I am not alone. Since January, more and more recession-driven education and public sector personnel have been asking me about the latest 'new' (and now fully buzzword-compliant) computing paradigm known as 'thin-client'. I guess the word has got out at last that PCs are a tad overkill.

Blueprint for Survival

The No-Brainer

If state schools and other public sector bodies adopted more Free, Open Source Software and low energy thin-client computing they would:

a) suffer no reduction in their quality of provision and

b) save up to 90% of their total ICT costs.

They could do this without upfront costs if they used the money immediately saved from non-renewal of proprietary licences to fund investment in low energy technology.

This assertion has been made before and details of its components have been explained in previous posts. The money thereby saved UK-wide is in the order of many millions of pounds.

Few dispute this nowadays, even the FUD has all but gone, but who cares anymore?

The Cloning of Open Source

The success of the Open Source software development model, with its culture of 'gift giving' has undoubtedly taken the world by storm. It has inspired both the anthropologist and business guru to pontificate endlessly on 'non-hierarchical loose networks collaborating towards common goals'.

Open Source ideas have been cloned and cloned again in different contexts. It has even inspired a generation of criminals and insurgent terror groups, leading to the coining of terms like 'open source cyber crime' and 'open source warfare' which are now appearing in US judicial reviews and learned papers. Apparently individual hackers tweak each other code (for free) and fighters help improve each other weapons and strategies. All very criminal.

Darwin at 200 and Linux at 20

On The Convergent Evolution of Desktop Operating Systems

This post is definitely not for the Creationists. I have learned my lesson: don't mention creationism in blogs, so I won't.

It is in fact an homage to Darwin on his forthcoming 200th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species comes in a week where for the first time it is shown conclusively that a group of Dung Beetles have switched from a dung to a millipede diet, heradling a start of a new species.

Computing in Education and the Credit Crunch

The Credit Crunch and subsequent recession, is nothing to celebrate particularly if you are someone who faces unemployment as a result. I say this because I want to present aspects of the economic landscape positively without descending into "a bit of hardship will do us all good" rhetoric.

The area that I think will benefit from a new realistic attitude to consumption is computing, in particular computing in an educational context.

The current edu-ICT model is unsustainable. It simply costs too much and wastes too much. Don't take my word for this, BECTA the Government's educational technology quango has been saying so publicly for years.

Wireless Linux Terminal Services

There has been plenty of techno-news last week. The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas made it clear that low-power consumption computing is the only game in newly-green, post-Bush, eco-friendly USA. Interestingly Microsoft has announced that it will take on UK graduates who cannot otherwise get a job; so no change there then. But, soaring above these events, is the real news that there is now a rather nifty system for PXE-booting netbooks wirelessly. The significance of the last point will become clearer as you read on.

It must be said that schools have a few IT problems at the present: